Yan Jun – On 3 Pipes

YanJunWEB

3“ CDR – 1000füssler

An interesting abstract-experimental 3” CDR is released under the label 1000füssler. Yan Jun is a Beijing-based artist involved at various levels and in different areas of contemporary electronics, from improvisation to site-specific research, from field recordings to noise, a contributor to The Wire and a benchmark for any “audio-abuse” from China. Yan Jun is accustomed to using unstable feedback systems, techniques that modulates several options, from very quiet and delicate treatments to more stinging and extremist performance. On 3 Pipes, a composition divided into two tracks, respectively 8’12 “and 14’21”, belongs to the first type of experimentation, featuring the most sensitive but still vivid recordings generated using contact microphones placed on water pipes (two in the first track, one in the second). Both recordings have been heavily modified during the mastering process and the original materials contain strong noises from the recording equipment, especially the right channel of track 1. Yan Jun informed us about how much the Chinese scene is currently full of new ideas but also afflicted by a now incomprehensible censorship. The transition from traditional music forms, related to folk and ethnic music, to more contemporary evolutions seems to struggle with a problem of freedom and shared cultural experiences, although in the eternal recurrences of an sound genome we can not fail to see that certain primordial elements return, as in a sort of time machine. This approach moves beyond the culture of specific places and regions, beyond stylistic genres, academies and approaches, because something ancestral always hides in even the most contemporary of approaches.

 

1000fussler | Yan Jun – Music 1 Excerpt

 

1000fussler | Yan Jun – Music 2 Excerpt